Give and Take
by Marg Hammerman
Summary: Amid the events of Divided We Stand and the X-Men's move to San Francisco, Kurt and Logan navigate a whirlwind of desire, love, and trust as they struggle to define the new terms of their relationship. Slash, with some mild Kurt/Betsy. Sequel to "The End of the Beginning."
1. Chapter 1

**All Ages Summary:** Amid the events of Divided We Stand and the X-Men's move to San Francisco, Kurt and Logan navigate a whirlwind of desire, love, and trust as they struggle to define the new terms of their relationship. Slash. (With some mild Kurt/Betsy.)

**This story is rated "M" for mature sexual content, all of it consensual and loving, but still—sex. Don't say I didn't warn you! :)**

**Preamble...** This is kind of a sequel to my other Kurt/Logan story, _The End of the Beginning_. You don't necessarily have to read that one first, though a few of the things in this story refer back to it. You also don't have to be a comics nerd to read this, though if you _are_ a comics nerd (like me), the relevant X-Men events/comics are _Messiah Complex_ (some flashbacks), _Divided We Stand_ (Chapters Two and Three), and _Wolverine: Origins_ (specially, _Wolverine: Origins_ #46, which is the context of Chapter 5). One other thing: I know the Cliff House in San Fran hasn't been a hotel since it burned down for the first time at the turn of the century (thanks, Wikipedia!), but I'm pleading artistic licence :)

**Disclaimer #1:** Whether because of condoms or mutant healing factors, my heroes always practice safe sex.

**Disclaimer #2:** I don't own the X-Men, so I definitely don't make any money from writing about them.

Thanks to Sundowhn, as well as the always inspirational folks over at Logurt on LiveJournal!

And now, finally... Enjoy!

**GIVE AND TAKE**

**Chapter One**

Logan untied Kurt's feet first. As he freed each one, he massaged their unique shape under his fingers, kneading his thumbs into the arches. Then he moved on to Kurt's hands. He started with his right one, tied to the brass bars at the top of the bed, before tackling his injured arm, tied at the side because Kurt's range of motion was still limited. As he pulled loose the quick-release knot in the fabric tie, he heard Kurt groan. Logan felt the delicate pattern of scar tissue under Kurt's silky indigo fur as Kurt flexed his arm, drawing it stiffly towards his body.

"Does it hurt?" asked Logan, pressing gently into the muscles around Kurt's shoulder blade.

"It was worth it," Kurt insisted, his warmth only slightly forced.

Logan released Kurt enough to let him roll over onto his back. Then he lowered his chest over his and kissed him, tugging lingeringly on his blue lips. As Logan pulled away, Kurt was smiling softly below his glittering amber eyes, awash in a sea of contentment. Logan allowed his gaze to linger on that beauteous sight for just a moment before collapsing back against the mattress. He folded his hands behind his head, savouring his own post-coital bliss.

After what might have been minutes or hours, the stillness was broken by Kurt shifting back onto his stomach, his good arm gripping the pillow above his head. Logan moved toward him, resting his cheek against Kurt's shoulder, smelling him, listening to the steady rhythm of his blood. Even after three weeks of sharing a bed nearly every night, Logan was still in thrall to the privilege of such easy, casual access to Kurt's naked body, a privilege he never truly believed he could have. A privilege he still wasn't sure he deserved.

He laid his hand on Kurt's back and moved it slowly downwards, watching the subtle play of the low light in Kurt's fur as it shifted under his touch. Touching Kurt wasn't like touching an animal—at least any animal that existed on Earth. Kurt's fur was too short, too soft, to serve any practical function of warmth or physical protection. To look at or touch, Kurt's fur was more like a version of silk velvet but lustrous, with a colour-changing quality. Logan never tired of its mystery, just as he never stopped being entranced by Kurt's unclothed beauty. Seeing—but especially touching—Kurt's naked body still seemed magical, otherworldly.

Like a man in a dream, Logan continued to stroke him, from his neck past his shoulder blades to the hollow of his lower back, where he'd let go and start over, meticulously following the delicate, light-refracting grains as they broke over Kurt's bones and muscles. Logan took the time to savour the sensation, knowing that if he were any less blissful, Kurt might not allow such attentions. Which was stupid; Logan knew Kurt loved being petted, as surely as he knew he'd never admit it. Except in and around sex, of course, when everything became fair game. Logan was sure that in some ways, Kurt was most himself during sex. Desire made Kurt honest, something Logan hoped was also true about himself, as least where Kurt was concerned. Because he was sure he'd never made anyone as happy as he was capable of making Kurt when he made love to him. And if he could use his physical gifts to do that—if he could make Kurt forget all his insecurities, even for a moment, and help him to simply _be_—then he was sure it was the best use he'd ever made of those gifts since the first, awful day bone claws tore their way out of his knuckles.

Finally, unable to resist, Logan moved his hand down to Kurt's tail, draped lifelessly against his indigo leg. It twitched limply as Logan drew it toward him, running his hand over the soft, warm length of it, skipping the sensitive, forked tip before starting again at the base. In his semi-consciousness, Kurt tolerated Logan's hand for at least ten seconds before his body stiffened, and he flicked his tail decisively away.

"Come on—quit it."

"That really bugs you, huh?"

"You _know_ it does."

"Not always. Fer instance, five minutes ago."

"That's different."

"You afraid you might start purring or something?"

Kurt made an amused sound. "Yes, that's clearly what I'm 'afraid' of."

"It's just part of you. How's it any different than your arm or leg?"

Kurt's was silent for a long moment.

"It's just different," he said at last.

"Uh huh."

Kurt pushed himself wearily onto his side to face him, frowning. "Why are you doing this?"

"Doing what?"

Kurt regarded him through narrowed eyes for another long moment before rolling once more onto his back, dropping his head heavily against the pillow.

"Why can't we ever have a normal conversation."

It wasn't really a question, but Logan answered him anyway.

"'Cause we're not normal."

Kurt glanced at him, only managing to hold his frown in check for another few seconds before his lips twitched into a smile, and then a laugh. He was still laughing as Logan covered his face with his hand, feeling Kurt's mirth under his fingers as he swept them over the familiar, beloved contours of his face. Kurt's expression had calmed into a close-lipped smile by the time Logan's hand reached his neck, stirring the impossibly soft fur at the pressure point under his jaw line with the edge of his fingernail. Kurt's eyelids flickered as he released a small sound that wasn't quite a purr, but meant something similar.

Quitting while he was ahead, Logan settled his face into the crook of Kurt's neck, letting his hand slip down to Kurt's midsection. Kurt covered Logan's hand with his own.

"You know," Kurt began thoughtfully after a moment. "I used to think about getting rid of my fangs."

"Really? Why?"

"It would be easy to have them filed down. And, short of making me look like I'm cashing in on the vampire craze, they don't serve any purpose."

"Beg to differ."

"Hm."

"Well, how come you didn't go through with it then?"

"It didn't seem… right. After all, I don't really need my tail, either."

"But that's different, isn't it?"

"Ja. It is."

Logan hesitated only a moment before speaking his next words; over the past weeks, such things were becoming easier, if not painless, to say.

He brushed his lips against Kurt's neck as he said, "You're perfect the way you are."

Kurt's body twitched as he uttered an ironic snort. "Ja, I know."

Logan's heart sank a little, even if he'd never let Kurt know it. Yet in the silence that followed, Logan felt and heard Kurt swallow.

"When is Piotr supposed to be here, again?" Kurt asked, deliberately changing tracks.

"Said he'd be here at midnight. Flight leaves at 2:30."

"And we'll be in Irkutsk by… almost two days later, with the time change."

"Yep."

"How…" Kurt swallowed again. "How is he?"

"He's okay," Logan replied. "'Bout as well as any of us."

Kurt remembered it vividly, the morning twelve days ago when Logan had returned to Newark from outer space and told him Kitty was gone. Dead, maybe. Or maybe just lost. Maybe worse than dead. Kurt was certain it had been one of the worst moments of his entire life, made worse, somehow, but its unreality, by its happening, literally, worlds away, like a fact devoid of context. Yet as bad as that moment had been, Kurt also counted his blessings that Logan had been by his side, immediately offering up his arms and the firm, flat surface of his chest for the tears that followed. Over the course of the next hours and days, Kurt had also dried Logan's tears with his clothes, hands, and lips.

"Logan?" Kurt wasn't sure whether his voice sounded quiet, or distant, only that he was suddenly having trouble controlling it. "It's… Despite everything, I… "

Logan pressed his hand against Kurt's body, saving him the trouble of continuing. They stayed that way for several more minutes before Logan disengaged himself, getting out of bed and heading over to the dresser.

"You've got enough time to sleep for a couple hours before Pete gets here," he said. "Better make the most of it—it's gonna be a long flight."

Kurt pushed himself upright in the bed. "Are you going somewhere?"

"Got to make a quick call," said Logan, rummaging through the top drawer. "But I'll be back."

Kurt didn't bother to ask why Logan didn't simply use the phone in the apartment. He already knew: the call was private, too private for his ears. Kurt felt a tightness in his chest, less because of the fact of his exclusion than because he knew he was starting to grow used to such things. Already, he'd all but stopped questioning Logan verbally about his secrets. How long would it be before he stopped questioning him altogether? And who would he be when that happened?

He raised his eyes then, absorbing a full view of Logan's naked body as he pulled a t-shirt and some underwear out of the drawer, and began to get dressed. Watching him, Kurt released a silent, involuntary sigh. Kurt had never really acknowledged the beauty of Logan's body—or, for that matter, any man's body—until he'd experienced what such a body could do to him. He'd never really appreciated Logan's hands and arms until he'd felt them passionately gripping and manipulating his own naked flesh, until he'd experienced the transfusion of all that body's raw strength into an equally violent love, intoxicating in its ferocity.

Kurt was learning to crave surrendering to Logan's strength. Until Logan, he'd never really known the empowerment of that kind of surrender, which was actually a kind of trust. He'd never trusted another person enough to let them—or to truly want them—inside his own body. Until that afternoon many years ago in the locker room shower, when he'd thought nothing could get better than the feeling of Logan's hand on his cock as his rough, hard chest ground against his wet back. Until he'd felt Logan's soap and water slick fingers circle and slip inside his opening, retreating quickly at Kurt's sharp intake of breath. Until Kurt had leaned back heavily against Logan's shorter, thicker body, his tail contracting around his muscular thigh, feeling an overwhelming surge of relief as he heard himself whisper, "It's okay."

With Logan, Kurt found a different kind of release than he'd ever known with a woman. Despite her adventurousness in so many other areas, Amanda in particular had never enjoyed bondage. Knowing his past as intimately as she did, Kurt was sure she worried his desire to have his hands or feet tied during sex was a symptom of subconscious self-hatred. She didn't understand, as Logan did, that it was really about getting past that. Kurt needed to know that even restrained, and without using his powers, he could still feel safe and powerful—that he could still feel like himself.

Yet as good as being with Logan could be—and as good as it _had_ been for the past week, especially—Kurt still felt himself pining after the different but wonderful pleasures of women. He still thought about Ororo, still had the occasional inappropriate but unavoidable dream about possessing her under his hands and body. But lately the dream had become complicated and slightly torturous. He'd be moving over Ororo, warm and tight between her thighs as he kissed her expression of ecstasy, tangling his fingers in her hair, gathering her breasts into his hands. But then he'd feel a sharp but not unwelcome downward tug on his tail, and Logan would be behind him, entering him, thrusting in concert with his movement inside Ororo. Inevitably, the dream would end with his being overtaken by a series of animal moans, virtually frothing at the mouth before waking to cold-damp fur, a tail that felt twisted into knots, and, of course a throbbing ache between his legs. Luckily, when Logan was around he was always more than happy to ease such a predicament. Yet, sated as he'd be afterwards, Kurt always found the dream returning in haunting fragments, nagging him with implications he couldn't quite grasp.

"You'll be okay here? I shouldn't be long."

Logan's voice snapped Kurt back to the present.

"Of course," he said tonelessly. "I'll be fine."

Logan threw on a black motorcycle jacket and was gone, leaving Kurt naked and alone with too many unwanted thoughts. Kurt crawled out of bed and didn't quite limp toward the shower in what felt like the vain hope of washing Logan's scent off and out of his body before Peter arrived. Kurt wasn't sure which friends knew about the new dimension of his relationship with Logan. Not that he particularly cared—not anymore. Except he knew he didn't want anyone else to find out the way Kitty had, marching into the bedroom to find them twined in each other's arms, just hours after he'd lied and told her there was nothing going on. When—and if—the rest of their friends and teammates found out, Kurt wanted it to be on his terms. Yet he still chided himself for insisting that it mattered, knowing that if there was anyone he should talk to, it was Scott. Because he was far less worried about the implications of the things he and Logan were doing to each other's bodies than he was worried about the implications of the things Logan was doing when he wasn't around to see.

Turning on the shower and testing the water under his hand, Kurt mused darkly that despite the way it happened, he'd always be grateful that Kitty had known, and not just because it meant his last words to her hadn't been lies. Thinking about the breakfast they'd shared in that same apartment three short weeks ago, when just the fact of Kitty's smiling presence seated between himself and Logan had made anything seem possible, Kurt knew that as badly as he missed her, he was far more intensely thankful to have known her.

Logan returned a little more than two hours later, with Peter in tow.

"Kurt!" Peter exclaimed, beaming as he strode across the room to throw his arms around Kurt's body. "It has been too long, my friend."

"It's good to see you, too," Kurt assured him, smiling and wincing as he freed himself from Peter's too-strong grip.

"I am glad. Come—Betsy is waiting downstairs with the car."

"Betsy?" Kurt echoed, instantly mortified by the hint of nervousness he heard in his own voice.

"Da. I was going to hire a driver but she insisted. She says she has missed you." Peter glanced quickly at Logan, smiling conciliatorily. "_Both_ of you."

Logan grunted. "I'm sure."

Peter and Logan collected the bags and Kurt followed behind, still using his cane, though no longer dependent on it. Sure enough, when they excited the building into the early morning darkness, there was Elizabeth Braddock, leaning against the side of the black Impala, parked by itself in the visitor's roundabout. She was dressed for the sake of anonymity, in Keds, tight black spandex running pants and an oversized men's dress shirt beneath a cropped bomber jacket, her violet hair tucked up underneath a New Jersey Nets baseball cap. Kurt smiled softly to himself as he observed the uselessness of her disguise; with the regal, confidant way she stood and moved, and even her face, her beautiful, unpredictable lips and ever-watching eyes, Betsy could never be either average or inconspicuous—at least in his eyes.

As Kurt approached her, she flashed him a quick smile from beneath the tilted-down brim of her baseball cap before circling the car to the driver's side. Kurt watched as Peter and Logan finished loading the bags into the trunk. Then Logan stepped close to Kurt and did something truly unexpected: he touched the side of Kurt's face and gave him a quick, close-lipped kiss on the mouth. The heat Kurt imagined he felt in Peter and Betsy's however-discretely-averted gazes did nothing to avert the flash-freeze that consumed his entire self. Logan, however, was utterly nonchalant, which Kurt found even more disconcerting; following the kiss, Logan proceeded to rest his hand casually on Kurt's shoulder while opening the front passenger's side door for him, even holding his cane while he waited for him to take his seat.

Kurt forced sensation back into his face and limbs through a severe act of will as Logan closed the door. He turned bravely, though reluctantly, to confront Betsy's continued, subtle smile.

"You look terrible," she said lightly.

Kurt remembered he was still using his image inducer, and clicked it off. "Better?"

Betsy's smile widened. "Much. Though you still look a little pale."

"Is that even possible?"

"Only to a connoisseur's eye."

In the final second before Peter and Logan entered the car, Betsy covered Kurt's hand with hers where it rested against his thigh.

"You do look good," she told him, suddenly genuine. "_Really_."

"Betsy… It's not that I… It's just—"

Kurt's feeble attempt to explain what Betsy already seemed to know ended abruptly when Peter opened the back door and joined them, followed by Logan. Betsy gave Kurt's hand a final, affectionate squeeze and released it.

"So," said Betsy, eyeing Peter and Logan in the rear view mirror as she started the engine. "Are you gentlemen ready for a fourteen hour economy class flight to the northern wastes of the world?"

"I don't know about these clowns," said Logan, mouth forming his signature tight-lipped grin. "But I've got a whole carry-on of Archie Double Digests and Sudoku. The flight alone's gonna be the best vacation I've had in a decade."

Betsy's violet eyes rolled across to Kurt. "Tell me he's joking."

Kurt shook his head in mock-lament. "I wish I could…"

Peter's boisterous laugh filled the car, and Kurt started to feel himself relaxing. Maybe, he thought, it would be a nice vacation, after all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

Logan was having a terrible vacation. It wasn't his idea of a good time spending five full days exploring churches, monuments, and history in a desolate winter landscape whose only redeeming trait besides churches, monuments, and history was the easy availability of a stiff drink. It would have been endurable if he'd been able to shake off the cold by ending each day plying his naked skin against Kurt's warm, velvet fur. But on that score, too, he was out of luck. Over the past five days, Logan had barely seen Kurt, let alone touched him. Kurt used his image inducer nearly all the time, so that Logan only glimpsed his real face and body at night and in the morning, when they shared various hotel rooms with Peter. They could have gotten separate rooms but Kurt insisted otherwise, something about not making Peter feel like a third wheel, and asserting that although things had changed, nothing had changed. Logan was sure Kurt knew that was bullshit; even Peter could tell things would never be the same again.

But there was no time, and especially no space, to argue the issue. So Logan grit his teeth and wasn't quite successful at giving Kurt a wide berth. After just two days of sharing rooms with separate beds, Logan had started dropping Kurt not-quite-subtle hints to sneak off into various bar and restaurant bathrooms, hints Kurt stubbornly refused to acknowledge. Logan even hacked Kurt's image inducer to turn him into Angelina Jolie in the hopes of stealing a tabloid-worthy kiss, but to no avail; Kurt simply laughed off the joke, and said he'd get back at him later. Always later.

But it wasn't just lust that was making Logan anxious. It was also doubt, and the ever-present guilt he was only able to assuage when Kurt's body was in easy reach. Separated from that physical connection, it all come flooding back, all the reasons it would never work and why he never should have started any of it to begin with. Just as he'd done the very first time he laid his hand on Kurt's body in something more than friendship, Logan cursed himself, knowing that each step forward was worth two steps back. He also knew that by now, going all the way back was impossible; it would take several lifetimes to traverse that distance, and Logan had lived too many lifetimes already.

Yet the hopelessness of the situation only made Logan want Kurt more; knowing their time together would be short, he was desperate to make the most of it. Truly, there was no escape from wanting Kurt. Away from him, Logan wanted to seize whatever moments they had in a quick burn, a glorious conflagration of passion whose memory could last a lifetime. With him, his desperation was transformed into an absolute conviction that their connection was immortal, too powerful to ever burn out or face away in any of death, disaster, or hurt.

Logan was still struggling with those thoughts and desires on their fifth day in Russia, when they finally made it to the gravestone of Peter's parents. Together, they spent long moments gazing down at the stone monument that also marked Peter's vanished boyhood, paying tribute to a life uprooted and forever changed by the same genetic accident afflicting them all. Afterwards, they retired to the closest bar, where they all did their best to throw themselves into drinking and reminiscing. For his part, Logan also did his best not to hungrily search Kurt's disguised face for hints of his real self, or to suggest anything other than needing to piss when he got up to use the bathroom.

Kurt watched Logan head toward the bathroom and breathed a silent sigh of relief that he'd managed to leave without innuendo. That certainly hadn't been the case throughout the week, when Logan had plagued him with secret hands and feet under tables and around corners, sometimes slipping a quick, tickling touch inside Kurt's shirt at his collarbone or midsection, other times brushing his lips against the back of Kurt's neck or jaw when Kurt passed too closely behind him, or when Logan went out of his way to help Kurt on with his coat. The day before, as he'd eased past Kurt in a booth, Logan had even used his enhanced senses to find Kurt's invisible tail and pinch it, causing Kurt to choke on his beer even as a rush of heat swept over his thighs that he was angry at Logan for making him deal with, when he was trying so hard to maintain the appearance of what usually passed for normalcy.

It wasn't that Kurt wanted to deny anything; it was clear Peter knew he was sleeping with Logan, and that even the kiss on the way to the airport had been a confirmation, rather than a revelation. And yet, thoroughly against his rational will, Kurt still worried about implications. At his core, he was deeply troubled by the prospect of being treated differently by an old friend whom he knew looked up to him as a leader and mentor. Although Kurt wasn't truly afraid of rebuke, from Peter or anyone else whose opinion he valued, he was afraid of acceptance in the form of knowing looks and eye rolls, afraid of his already ill-defined relationship with Logan being reduced to a joke among his friends and teammates. Kurt couldn't handle that, to be made a fool of for decisions he already feared were foolish, or even dangerous. Even worse was the way those decisions—and those desires—seemed increasingly foolish the longer he and Logan were away from their isolated world in Newark. Confronted with reality, the romance didn't fade, though it did start to seem untenable, a naïve dream exposed against the solidity of Peter's sure, unchanged identity.

Kurt took a long sip of beer. When he put down the mug and looked up, Peter was watching him, affixing him plaintively with his wide, open face and grey eyes.

"We must talk about it, Kurt."

Kurt did his best to return Peter's gaze. "About… what?"

"You. And Logan."

Kurt had been anticipating such a question, and was actually surprised it had taken as long as it had for things to come to a head. Yet he still made an effort to dodge the inevitable, smiling nonchalantly as he once again raised his mug to his lips.

"Really, there's nothing to—"

"How long have you been together?"

"We're not—"

"How long have you been having sex?"

Kurt took his time swallowing, realizing that Peter wasn't going to be easily deterred.

"A few months," he said. "And… a few times before that."

Peter nodded slowly. "I cannot say I am terribly surprised."

Kurt felt a hot flash against his face. "I'm not gay I just—" he bit his tongue painfully, scrunching his eyes shut as he pinched the bridge of his nose. "God... I don't know why I said that. I'm sorry. It shouldn't matter. It _doesn't_ matter. What I'm trying to say is that before Logan…"

"I understand. You love him."

Kurt opened his eyes. "He's my friend."

"A friend you are sleeping with," Peter reminded him mildly. "A friend you have been sleeping with for years. A friend whose look or touch tempts you to sneak away into the bathroom."

"Uh..."

"Please, Kurt. You and Logan both tend to forget—I am no longer a wide-eyed boy straight off the commune."

Kurt sighed. "I'm sorry, Piotr. I don't want you to feel like… The truth is, I don't know what this is, or if it will last. Except that with Logan, nothing ever lasts very long."

"Except friendship."

"You see my dilemma." Kurt made a rueful salute with his mug before taking another long sip.

"I see it is not easy," said Peter. "But then, things of value rarely are."

"Ja," Kurt agreed heavily, mug clunking on the wooden table. "I know. Believe me—I _know_."

Peter regarded him seriously, laying his hand on the table between them. "He cares for you, Kurt. More than I have ever seen him care for anyone."

"I know that, too," said Kurt, staring out the dark, frosted window.

"So…?"

"Even if it was…" Kurt ground his teeth as he trailed off. "In my experience, love isn't always enough. It rarely is, in fact."

"That has not been my experience."

Kurt looked at him. "But Logan is not Kitty."

"Da," Peter agreed. "Logan is here. Katya is not."

Kurt acknowledged the truth of Peter's words with a long, sympathetic look that he hoped was at least somewhat decipherable through the veil of his inducer. The moment was broken by Logan, sidling back up to the table.

"What'd I miss?" Logan asked lightly, dropping back into his seat. "Anything interesting?"

"No," Peter assured him, flashing a small, cryptic smile. "Not really."

They all turned at the sound of a beer bottle breaking over the counter. Kurt caught a familiar glint in Logan's eye and knew at once that their evening was about to get a lot more interesting. And he realized he didn't mind—anything was better than more alcohol-soaked heart-to-hearts about things that both alcohol and the heart could only complicate, but never resolve. So Kurt threw himself into the bar fight with gusto; after so many weeks of bed rest, it felt good to test his strength, to enjoy the flex of his muscles and remember what it was to be at home in his body, completely on his own terms.

Afterwards, at the train station, Kurt was feeling so elated that when Peter disappeared into the ticket booth, he grabbed the lapel of Logan's jacket, pulling him up against his body and the wall behind the booth's open door. Logan didn't need to be asked twice, pressing Kurt back against the wall as he pushed his tongue deep into his mouth. Kurt's eyes were bleary when Logan finally pulled away, but not enough to miss Peter frowning down at both of them over Logan's shoulder.

Said Peter, "'Errol Flynn caught in passionate embrace with Canadian lumberjack at Siberian train station.' You would give the _National Enquirer_ a run for their money, my friends."

Kurt laughed, too happy to remember his fears. Peter smiled back so that only Logan was left in the lurch.

"'Lumberjack'?" Logan echoed.

Kurt only laughed harder as he slipped out of Logan's arms and went to Peter's side.

"Come, Logan," Kurt called over his shoulder, skipping down the platform next to Peter. "We wouldn't want to miss the train."

But of course the good times couldn't last—after all, they were X-Men. Before dawn the next morning, all three of them had been taken prisoner, awaking from a brutally secured oblivion to find themselves in a Red Room torture chamber.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

SHEILD arrived half an hour after Logan contacted them through the Red Room's communication system. Two hours after that, Logan, Peter, and Kurt were at a SHIELD base outside Novosibirsk, where they all received medical treatment and fresh clothes. Now, they were being debriefed along with a dozen other SHIELD agents in a small, standing room auditorium. Having given all the information they had to give, Logan, Peter, and Kurt were now merely listening. At least, they were trying to. In reality, they were all too preoccupied and exhausted to do anything other than wait politely for permission to leave, to retire to their assigned quarters where they'd undoubtedly manage too few hours of sleep before catching a SHIELD cargo jet heading back to America.

Logan tapped his foot impatiently, having long ago started listening with half an ear. After everything they'd been through that evening—after everything they'd almost _lost_—procedure and decorum seemed not only irrelevant, but infuriating. Logan hadn't had a moment alone with Kurt since they'd been attacked on the train, when he'd saved Kurt's body with his own, falling from a hundred feet in the sky into a bloody, broken heap on yet another snowy mountaintop, Kurt's already-unconscious but blessedly alive form clutched desperately in his arms. Yet that experience had been heaven compared to waking up again, chained to a wall in the Red Room torture chamber and staring directly at Kurt, who was kneeling, straight-jacketed and hooded, inside a glowing containment box. The only exposed part of his body had been his tail, which was that much more expressive in its isolation. Logan had heard Kurt's voice inside his head, whispering and cursing, with every jerky, furious lash of his helpless tail.

Now, thanks to Kurt, they were all free. Kurt's tail, however, was not, tucked inside his black, SHIELD-issue sweatpants. Standing slightly behind Peter and Kurt, Logan could see Kurt's tail stirring inside his pants, probably involuntarily. Which almost certainly made things worse; Logan thought it must feel something like an itch you couldn't scratch, a supposition Kurt's body language seemed to confirm. Logan watched as Kurt shifted his weight distractedly, giving his shoulders a half roll before crossing his arms tightly across his upper body, fingers flexing around his upper arm. It was all Logan could do not to pop his claws and slice Kurt's SHIELD-issue clothes right off him. He was so sure Kurt would be grateful, it might almost be worth it.

Logan began to uneasily readjust his own body as he continued to watch Kurt's subtly restless movements, the two-fingered hand he shook through his dishevelled hair and the twitching, flexing muscles in his back and shoulders, clearly visible—at least to Logan's eyes—through his tight white t-shirt, stained vaguely grey by his indigo fur. And of course his hidden tail, begging for release, disobeying, as it often did, the rational wishes of its owner.

Logan knew Kurt hated being contained, boxed-in, immobilized. That was pretty natural for a teleporter, not to mention someone whose three-and-a-half-foot long prehensile tail and two-toed feet always excluded him from off-the-shelf pants or shoes. And then, of course, there was the small matter of his personal history… Yet Logan also knew, as few others did, that Kurt also loved those things, loved being tied, restrained, dominated. Logan accommodated him because he knew it was somehow therapeutic, even though he wasn't quite sure about the how or why. For the most part, Logan liked it because Kurt did; while Logan usually initiated things, it was Kurt who dictated them. Logan was sure that at least some part of Kurt enjoyed the taboo of it, the freedom of giving in to those things he was so accustomed or forced to deny in his day-to-day and hand-to-mouth existence—like admitting his own helplessness and submitting to the will of another, two things Kurt would rather die than enact anywhere other than a private room with a trusted companion, naked and hot and full of desperate longing.

His mind drifting, Logan blinked, and the scene seemed to change to just that. He saw Kurt, naked, face down on the mattress, limbs tied at four points to the bed frame, skin shivering under his fur as Logan dragged out his arousal, touching him, licking him, sometimes gently, teasing, and sometimes roughly, letting him feel and known his restrained power and a white-hot hint of danger until he finally knotted Kurt's tail around his closed fist, pulling him back against his bonds even as the rest of him pushed forward, and Kurt made a sound that was a perfect mixture of pain and pleasure, glorious in its abandon.

Logan blinked again, fighting back a sudden, intense wave of heat. But when he opened his eyes, he still wasn't back in the briefing room. Instead, he was six weeks in the past, on a frozen, whistling mountaintop, lying in a patch of snow stained red by his own blood mixed with Kurt's, his own wounds closing even as Kurt's seemed to gape, Logan knowing that if he couldn't stop the bleeding he'd prefer to drown in the widening pool of Kurt's life-force rather than go on living without him, waking every day certain he'd never hear his voice or see the sun glinting off his fang-tipped smile, never feel his heartbeat slow and speed under his hands, his own goodness confirmed by the totality of Kurt's trust. His undeserved trust…

Then he was back at the apartment in Newark, cradling Kurt's damp face in his hands, Kurt's blunt fingers crumpling a handful of Logan's shirt as he tried to finish a series of impossible questions, his voice strange and broken through his steady, silent tears.

"_Why wasn't I… Why couldn't I… I—I should have been there, should have been… Oh Katzchen… How can I go on when I… How can I know who I am when she's gone…?"_

"Logan…?"

Kurt's real, immediate voice corralled at least part of Logan's brain.

"Yeah. What is it?"

"The briefing's over."

They left the briefing room and followed their assigned aide, Agent Hassid, down the corridor toward the dormitories. Logan remained behind all three of them, still watching Kurt, hypnotized by the tiny differences in the way he walked without his tail. Since leaving the Red Room, Logan found himself clinging to Kurt's every movement like a lifeline to a present reality that seemed to be receding out of sight, touch, and smell. And to watch Kurt's body not behaving the way it should was like having that lifeline snatched away. He wanted, _needed_, to fix it. If he didn't get Kurt down to his naked fur within the next five minutes he'd—

At that moment, Hassid stopped in front of one of many identical steel grey doors lining the corridor.

"This is Mr. Logan's room," he said. "Mr. Wagner and Mr. Rasputin's rooms are in the next section. If you'd like to follow me…"

"Uh…" Kurt glanced quickly at Logan, whom he immediately saw was well past the point of making coherent excuses. Like the true friend he was, Peter rescued them both.

"Come," Peter's warm Russian voice enthused as he threw a large arm around Hassid's shoulders. "My friends have some unfinished business. If you show me Kurt's room, I will be happy to relay the information."

Hassid looked unsure. "Unfinished business…? If it's something that was left out of the report—"

"Come," Peter said again, pulling Hassid reluctantly but successfully away.

Kurt watched them leave, then pressed the button to open the door, and stepped inside. Logan followed close at his heels into a small room furnished only with a narrow single bed and a comparatively large metal desk.

Kurt sighed heavily as the door slid shut behind them. "That was close. For a second there I thought—"

As Kurt turned, he was interrupted mid-sentence by Logan's hips and chest slamming into him, pushing him back toward the now-closed door.

"Oh elf…" Logan breathed the words against Kurt's lips, rubbing his cheek roughly against him before pulling back to kiss his eyelid, his cheekbone, tracing the outline of his pointed ears with his fingers, confirming and memorizing all the grounding, tactile details of his face even as he tasted him.

"Mmpph…" Kurt struggled to come up for air against the unexpected fury of Logan's passionate assault. "Logan…" he managed to plead. "I… Just give me a—_ah_…"

"I need you," Logan panted gruffly. "Now."

Helpless under Logan's roving hands, Kurt dropped his shoulders against the door, closing his eyes as he threw back his head.

"It has been a long week…" he admitted breathlessly.

And then Logan scratched his stubble up Kurt's exposed neck, nipping him under his jaw line, and Kurt was well and truly gone, lost under the weight of his own animal need. They fought each other out of their clothes as they exchanged rough kisses like challenges, tortured by each necessary interruption of bodily contact, both sighing with relief as Logan reached into the curve of Kurt's arched back and pulled down his pants and underwear in one firm motion, liberating his tail. Logan stroked down its length while it lashed in anxious, grateful freedom, alive and warm in his hand; Kurt released a groan that was almost a growl into Logan's mouth, unable to resist touching himself as his other hand groped clumsily for the waistband of Logan's pants, finally shucking them down. Kurt's desperation, and especially the sight of his blue, two-fingered hand on his blue cock, was almost more than Logan could bear. It took a miracle of restraint to let Kurt pull back enough to sputter, "H-How are we going to—"

He was cut short by a gasp as Logan swung him off the ground, kicking away the chair and fumbling with a lamp before dropping Kurt onto the metal desk, thrusting himself close between Kurt's firm, warm thighs that wrapped themselves around his waist as he bent all the way over Kurt's body and kissed him again, biting into Kurt's lower lip and scratching his hands briefly through his fur and over his ribs before pushing back his indigo legs and diving almost frantically to the goal.

The romance came after, trying to will the blissful seconds of post-coital bliss into eternity, enjoying the simple wonders of their interconnected bodies and the shared rhythms of their still-pounding heartbeats. Finally, reality seeped in, as Kurt twitched uncomfortably under Logan's body. In response, Logan scooped him up again, but gently, carrying him like a bride over the threshold to the bed, where he pulled back the blankets before laying him down carefully, sweeping his now-lethargic tail down and to the side.

"My hero," Kurt quipped, chuckling softly.

Logan leaned down for a deep, tender kiss before using his own discarded underwear to clean the sticky mess off Kurt's stomach. Kurt lay back contentedly, allowing himself to be attended to until Logan finally turned off the light and eased down next to him in the narrow bed, folding his thigh over Kurt's and resting his cheek against his chest. His hand stroked idly through Kurt's fur, fingers unconsciously tracing the hidden, spidery scar tissue above his heart.

"How're you feeling?" he drawled, soothed by the echo of his low tones against Kurt's chest.

He could feel the tendons tighten in Kurt's neck as he smiled.

"My eyelids are all stars, but I can't be sure if that's you or the fact that I was electrocuted a few hours ago."

"But you're—"

"Ja. I'll live."

"Do you want a shower, or…?"

"Not badly enough to get up."

Logan didn't mind that. He liked the lingering smell of himself inside Kurt, mixing, of course, with the smell of Kurt's own spent passion, of sweat and cum and the familiar musky scent of Kurt's fur that only Logan's enhanced senses could detect and know.

Logan ran a sightless hand over Kurt's tangled hair. "Thanks."

"For… what?"

"For savin' my life."

"That's a bit dramatic, don't you think?"

"Not _here_, back at… You know what I mean."

"Is that what happened?" Kurt asked, voice still tinged with playfulness.

"Yeah."

"I thought we saved each other."

Logan's lips curved upwards almost despite himself, as Kurt's words hit him strangely.

"Hm. Well, have it your way."

"I will," Kurt assured him.

In a final burst of passionate, playful energy, Kurt pushed Logan off his chest. Flipping him over onto his side, he fit himself tight against the shape of Logan's body, the backwards friction of his fur almost ticklish in the hollow of Logan's back. He kissed the crest of Logan's shoulder before pressing and rubbing his rough-soft face against the back of his neck.

His lips were close against Logan's earlobe as he whispered, "I guess this means you missed me."

Logan covered Kurt's forearms with his where they wrapped around his chest, threading five fingers through two. He restrained himself from also reaching for a handful of Kurt's tail, which curved around Logan's hip and down, between his thighs. Instead, he breathed deeply, drawing out the moment. To be held by Kurt was a sensual marvel: the subtle, shifting friction of his silky, velvet fur; his hands and feet designed for nothing if not embracing; and, of course, his ever-liquid tail, as soft and warm as the rest of him and happiest entwined with something warmer.

"Always, elf."

Kurt kissed him again behind his ear before snuggling into the pillow, letting Logan pull the blankets up and over their tangled, pink and blue limbs and bodies. Within minutes, Logan heard Kurt's heart and breathing slow and knew he was asleep.

Logan, though, lay awake—thinking, remembering. He'd hoped losing himself in Kurt would help him forget, but now, in the wake of his passion, there they were again: the memories. Not just events, but emotions, crowding in, dark and flickering yet vivid, like bat wings against the moon.

All at once, it was six weeks ago, and he was back in the medical bay, looking down at Kurt's somehow pale body, stained maroon with dried blood and drowning under a snarl of tubes and wires. His chest was barely moving, his heartbeat so slow even Logan struggled to detect it, especially amid the surrounding chaos, the louder smells and sounds of other wounds and crises that still managed to seem very far away, distant echoes against Logan's desperate search for Kurt's heartbeat. Yet the worst part was still to come: the moment Hank pried open Kurt's eyelids and Logan saw for the first time that Kurt's eyes weren't glowing. They were dull, white-grey like a burned out light bulb.

Then he flashed forward again, to another, different memory of Kurt's eyes. It was four hours ago, and Kurt was kneeling, straight-jacketed, on the steel floor of the Red Room torture chamber. The general pulled the canvas hood off Kurt's head and his golden eyes darted immediately across the room to Peter, and then to Logan. Kurt didn't flinch to see them, chained and helpless, the electrodes tearing Logan's skin at two dozen points, producing two dozen unique sensations that were nothing compared to the intensity of Logan's focus on what might be his last glimpse of Kurt's eyes, burning bright with rage and determination. And something else: an apology, and a goodbye. Kurt was saying goodbye because he knew what he was about to do, and he didn't think he would survive.

Then Logan was in Newark again, holding Kurt while he cried over Kitty, trying to will himself to share Kurt's pain yet feeling oddly, disconcertingly separate. He tried to think of Kitty, tried to think of the horror and tragedy of losing her so that he might share in Kurt's grief, and heal. Yet all he could think about was Kurt, asking himself: what would he do if I died? But even as his brain formed the question, he realized he already knew the answer. Suddenly, he was sure in a way he'd never been before that Kurt would give his life for his in a heartbeat, without a thought. And that scared Logan—angered him, even—because that wasn't how it was supposed to work. It defeated the purpose of everything he'd tried to build, the sense of order he'd carved out of a chaotic universe since the first time he'd looked across at his teammate—his friend—and realized with a mix of happiness and anguish that Kurt was the best man he'd ever known.

Kurt's tail twitched between Logan's thighs. Then he mumbled something sleepily and disentangled himself enough to turn over onto his other, uninjured side. Logan shifted to spoon him, shaken by how cold Kurt suddenly seemed in his arms. Logan felt as though he had to struggle all over again to hear Kurt's heartbeat. Yet he could see it, could see his chest rising and falling, so he knew he was alive. He was just asleep. Dreaming… What, Logan wondered, did Kurt dream about? Fantasies? Memories? Nightmares? Sometimes he'd utter fractured words or sentences that might have been any of the three. The same went for those times he'd wake up in a cold sweat, desperate to have Logan inside him, on top of him, below him, or, more rarely, to be inside Logan—that dream, whatever it was, made Kurt unpredictable, but with a single-minded purpose. Logan liked Kurt that way, which was why he'd never asked him about the substance of that or any other dream. Now, though, thinking about that choice and that motivation made Kurt's body seem even colder in his arms.

No longer able to bear the seeming failure of his senses, Logan released Kurt's body and got carefully, stealthily out of bed. Equally stealthily, he slipped on his pants and then, after a pause, his t-shirt. Then he hesitated again, staring down at Kurt's sleeping, oblivious form. He pulled on his socks, and, finally, his shoes. Kurt was still asleep. Logan stared at Kurt's back, his neck and his exposed bare indigo shoulder, tilting his head to watch his fur change colour in the dim glow of the ever-present LED emergency lighting. As he'd once done after returning to the apartment in Newark following a long night with X-Force, hands soaked in blood that would have dripped had it not long since dried and caked against his skin, Logan stood there for minutes, willing Kurt to wake up. Then, he'd wanted Kurt to find him returning to the place he had no right to be; he'd wanted the lash of Kurt's anger across his face, giving him a reason, an imperative, to leave, and never come back. Now, though, he willed Kurt to wake and find him leaving—escaping—because he desperately wanted a reason to stay, and Kurt's helpless, sleeping body only reminded him of every reason why he couldn't.

Logan swallowed. Then he turned, and walked out the door. With any luck, he'd be halfway around the world by morning.

* * *

Kurt awoke to a loud, pulsing alarm and wondered where he was. He located the alarm button quickly on a panel above his head, and turned it off. As the previous night's events came back to him, a slow smile spread across his face. His bleary eyes swept the bed and the room for Logan, but he was nowhere to be found.

Disappointed, but not terribly concerned, Kurt hauled his aching body out of bed, and headed for the shower. Yet by the time he'd showered and dressed, and Logan still wasn't there, he did feel a sense of trepidation creeping in. He told himself he was being foolish, that Logan was probably just taking a walk, or getting them some breakfast. Surely, he wouldn't… He _couldn't_…

Kurt met Peter and Hassid in the corridor, heading in his direction.

"Good morning Mr. Wagner," Hassid greeted amiably. "I trust you had a good sleep. If you'll follow me, I'll show you to the hanger. Breakfast will be provided in-flight."

With that, Hassid turned quickly, and proceeded down the hall.

It was Peter who grabbed the agent's shoulder, stopping him, and asked, "But… Where is Logan?"

"What—?" Hassid looked questioningly back and forth from Peter to Kurt. "I thought you knew. He's already gone. We had a flight leaving for Hong Kong four hours ago, and Mr. Logan asked to be on it."

"Hong Kong?" Kurt echoed, despite himself. "What would he be doing in…"

Kurt trailed off as he realized: nothing. Logan didn't have any business in Hong Kong, Kurt was sure of it. And he hated that—hated how sure he was. Even Peter knew it; Kurt noticed him trying to catch his eyes, a stifled word trembling on his lips.

Hassid cleared his throat. "Now… If you'll please…?"

Wordlessly, numbly, Kurt stepped into line behind the agent. As they walked, Peter laid a tentative hand on Kurt's shoulder, which Kurt banished with a quick glance. Peter respected Kurt's warning look throughout the flight and for all the days and weeks that followed, although Kurt sometimes wished he hadn't. Because he desperately needed someone to talk to, and his best friend was no longer an option.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

Kurt crossed himself and rose to his feet before the statue of the angel-winged Virgin Mary. Standing, he considered her beautiful, cold face for one more long moment, reluctant to let the outside world flood back in.

When Scott had asked Kurt if there was anything special he wanted at their new home, he'd responded almost instantly: a chapel. To Kurt's surprise, Scott had agreed. Since then, Kurt had been as happy to be kept busy helping with the chapel's planning and construction as he was grateful for the peace of mind its tranquil space afforded him once it was completed. Otherwise, the three months since he'd returned from Russia and accompanied the X-Men to San Francisco had been just short of tortuous. When Logan finally met them at their new headquarters after an unexplained two-week absence, Kurt didn't seek him out or demand an explanation, didn't yell or express any outward sign of either hurt or anger. Instead, he remained carefully, deliberately neutral, refusing to acknowledge his feelings in front of Logan or anyone else.

Kurt did, however, go out of his way to avoid any and all possibility of being alone with Logan. Even despite Logan's increasing absences, it was no easy task. Scott seemed to force Kurt and Logan to work together at every available opportunity; more than once, a few quiet seconds between punches had forced Kurt into awkward positions, struggling to keep his eyes averted from an expression on Logan's face that he was sure hinted dangerously at some kind of apology. The thought of Logan apologizing made Kurt physically ill. It was the one thing he couldn't bear. For Logan to apologize would be to admit there was something to apologize _for_, that at some point, Logan had done something to make Kurt care about him as more than a friend, a fact that Kurt needed to deny as a fundamental condition of his continued survival. To admit and remember the sensations Logan had once produced in him would have made it impossible to go to sleep at night, let alone get out of bed in the morning.

It also didn't help that they—all the X-Men—now lived on an island. Kurt hated the very idea of it. He hated the sense of the world closing in around them that had begun in earnest after M-day, continued through the latest destruction of the Mansion, and culminated in their relocation to the floating pile of steel and debris bearing the ominous moniker "Utopia." Kurt wondered whether Scott had ever bothered to read the book that name referred to, though he hoped not; ignorance was preferable, in this instance, to the far more frightening implications of misinterpretation.

Kurt tried to find something positive in the change, but it was difficult. It felt so much like running away, something Kurt had promised himself he'd never do again, not since that night in Winzeldorf, the worst night of his life, when'd he'd been rescued at the last moment from dying as a monster by a man he thought must be an angel. But of course he wasn't; he was only a mutant, as fragile and fallible as Kurt himself.

By the time Kurt left the chapel, it was well past midnight. He considered returning to his quarters but vetoed the idea, knowing he wasn't prepared for sleep. Yet the common area, too, was out of the question; Kurt wasn't keen on the unpredictability of who he might find there. He settled on heading for the kitchen, though not for any particular reason; he wanted a beer but hated drinking alone, and right at the moment, there wasn't anyone on Utopia he truly felt like drinking with. Still, it was somewhere to go.

When he reached the kitchen, Kurt paused at the threshold. The room was dark with the exception of the recessed lighting above the grey granite island countertop, illuminating with an unearthly glow the bare arms of the room's sole occupant, bent over a book next to an empty mug of what smelled like it had been mint tea. One shapely, bare foot was dangling, the other tucked up under her thigh. Her spine was curved forward, though not from bad posture; instead, her body was like a coiled spring, radiating controlled power rather than stiffness or, god forbid, weakness.

Her back was to Kurt as he entered the room, yet her identity was obvious even without the thick layers of violet hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back. Those limbs, that foot, that poise and quiet intensity, could only belong to one person.

Kurt felt a mixture of warmth and trepidation as he approached her. Normally, and since the first day he'd met her, Kurt enjoyed Elizabeth Braddock's company. He'd always been fascinated and entranced by her uneasy mix of passions, by the love of the fight that both complicated and complimented her boundless tenderness, and the haughty sense of entitlement that actually seemed to inform and enable her easy, candid acceptance. Truly, Betsy was beautiful in any body.

Yet she'd been uncharacteristically quiet of late, keeping to herself when she wasn't with Warren. Which made Kurt wonder about finding her now in such a public, albeit deserted, place. Was she looking for company, or avoiding it? But it was more than that. Kurt also knew he was at least a bit afraid of Betsy's candidness, the same candidness he usually found so appealing; his thoughts were disordered enough without the interference of a forthright telepath. There was, however, no turning back now. He continued forward, doing his best impression of a calm smile.

"Good evening, Ms. Braddock."

"Good _morning_, Kurt." Betsy's eyes remained locked on her book as she plucked an orange from the bowl on the countertop and hurled it wildly backward. "Catch."

Stretching to his full height, Kurt caught her wild throw easily. "Danke. But do me a favour and start it for me? Your fingers are so much better at that than mine."

He snapped the orange back at her as an overhand fastball. Betsy's left hand shot out instantly, the orange meeting her palm with a resounding 'smack.' Only then did she set down her book. _The Woman of the Dunes, _by Kōbō Abe.

"Is this you admitting weakness?" she asked archly, watching the edge of her own violet-painted fingernail slice a long, thin strip down the side of the orange.

"I'm just being practical," he said, accepting the orange and taking a seat at the barstool next to hers. "And capitalizing on the company of a good friend."

"It takes a good friend to open an orange for you?"

Kurt peeled back the skin, breaking off a segment for himself and handing Besty the second.

"Well, you know—cooties."

"I'll try to take that as a compliment," she said, pushing the full segment past her lips and chewing slowly.

"As well you should," Kurt advised her.

They each ate another segment before Betsy said, "Your chapel is beautiful, by the way. Though I must confess, I thought you'd given all that up."

"What—Religion?"

"No. Preaching."

"I'm not…" Kurt clenched his jaw, ever so slightly. "It's just a chapel. It's a place of reflection. That's all."

"And what do you reflect on these days?"

Kurt looked at her but she refused to meet his eyes, instead reaching across to tear two more segments from the orange he still held in his hand. Kurt frowned. But two could play at that game.

"Where's Warren?" he asked.

"Away," she said simply. "He does that, sometimes."

"And you're okay with that?"

Betsy took her time licking the juice off the outside edge of her index finger before running the same hand through her hair, tossing the heavy, multi-toned violet waves over her shoulder as she angled her face toward him, finally meeting his gaze.

"I asked you first."

Kurt had just opened his mouth to respond when Betsy changed tracks.

"How do you like our new home?"

Kurt inhaled a slow breath. "It's okay, I suppose. If you like islands."

"Tropical ones, yes. This one… It's a bit cramped, isn't it?"

When Betsy reached again for the orange, Kurt placed it on the counter in front of her. That seemed to dissuade her interest in eating it, though she continued to study it blindly.

"Your words," he said. "Not mine."

"Really, Kurt," she chided. "Scott won't give you a demerit for speaking your mind. That's assuming, of course, that he's listening. Though of course I wouldn't put it past him."

Kurt shifted his weight on the stool. Betsy was still avoiding his eyes, and it troubled him. She was as candid as usual on the surface, yet everything she said or did seemed cloaked in hidden meaning. What really unsettled him, though, was that he couldn't tell whether the hidden meaning was for his benefit, or her own.

"I don't like it here," he admitted. "But I also don't know where else we'd go."

Her violet irises flickered over him. When Kurt absorbed the sadness there, he understood something of why she was avoiding his eyes.

"Or where else _you'd_ go."

"Ja," Kurt agreed, also sadly. "That, too."

Kurt looked down at his hands resting on the granite countertop. It was one of those moments he almost resented the two-fingered, indigo-furred sight of them, feeling his difference bearing down on him like the weight of the ocean beating up against every shore of his new home.

Abruptly, Betsy thrust her face close to his, expression alight with sudden passion.

Her voice was thick with conspiratorial vigour as she said, "We could run away together. Tonight. Under the cover of darkness. We'll steal a boat and make for the mainland."

"They'd find us, bring us back," Kurt deadpanned.

"So we'll head south. Pass through Mexico to the Caribbean."

Kurt eyes rolled skyward, a smile tugging at his lips as he realized her train of thought. "Don't tell me—"

"We'll live as pirates," she continued, picking up steam. "Wild and free, living by wits and sword alone, hijacking luxury cruise ships and redistributing gold watches and traveller's cheques to the poor. Keeping enough, of course, to ensure our own comfort."

"Of _course_," Kurt agreed, succumbing to her always irresistible energy.

"What do you say?" she prodded, tilting her head down so that her narrowed, violet eyes shone up at him through her dark lashes.

Kurt returned her playful expression, flashing just a hint of fangs. "It depends. Will you be wearing leather pants and a whalebone corset?"

Betsy cocked an eyebrow. "Will _you_?"

Kurt's grin finally broke, fangs slipping out in earnest from behind his lips, though only for a moment.

"I'm sold," he said. "There's just one problem."

"What?"

His smile had all but fallen, as he said, "Warren."

"Oh." If Betsy was bothered by his change of direction, she gave no sign, except to retract her face. "I thought you meant Logan."

Kurt's smile fell completely, then, along with his eyes. "Betsy…"

Betsy returned to the remnants of her orange. She bit off half a segment, chewing methodically.

"How is he these days, anyway?"

Kurt shook his head slowly. "Honestly—I wouldn't know. I haven't seen a trace of him in weeks."

"Are you worried about him?"

"_Should_ I be?"

Betsy offered a deliberately nonchalant half-shrug. "I suppose he can take care of himself."

"Ja," said Kurt. "He _can_."

Betsy turned to him, lips forming a stern line.

"You know," she said cooly. "The easiest way not to feel like a bitchy wife is not to _act_ like one."

Kurt would have been angry, but her conviction didn't reach her eyes.

"Is that what _you_ do?"

"I try," she said. Then, dropping her gaze, "It doesn't work."

The severity of her shifts from playful to maudlin felt like a cramp in his heart. She was like a shadowy, carnival mirror distortion of her usual self, with all of her incredible passions turned sour. Suddenly, Kurt realized a lot of things had felt that way since the X-Men traded one coast for another.

Longing to recapture Betsy from whatever darkness she seemed to be fading into, Kurt didn't think twice before reaching out to her, running the back of his hand down the edge of her cheek, thinking, idly, that he liked how his fingers looked there, dark and textured against her pale, smooth skin.

"Are things really that bad?" he asked softly.

"Yes. And no."

She covered his hand with hers where it touched her, bringing it forward to brush her lips against his fingers. Kurt watched her kissing his hand, wishing he could know what it felt like, feeling strangely disconnected from his own body. When Betsy continued, her tone was somehow even sadder to match her happier words.

"Sometimes, though… things are quite wonderful."

"Ja…" Kurt agreed. She released his hand, and he it let it drop heavily into his lap.

After a moment, Betsy looked up again, forcing a small, humourless smile.

"Well, now, this turned from heartfelt to depressing far too quickly. What is it about this place? I miss our old home, and that pretty garden we used to have. You know—the one filled with statues of our dead friends."

Kurt did his best to smile back, letting her know he was grateful for her dark humour. It was stabilizing, somehow, to remember that things had never been easy.

He was looking deeply into her eyes when he said, "I'm very glad you came back to us, Elizabeth Braddock."

Betsy returned his look steadily. "So you've told me."

"There are some things you cannot say too many times."

"Well, then… I'm glad you never left."

A stand of violet hair had slipped forward to touch the edge of Betsy's eye, and Kurt found himself staring at it, fighting with and wondering at his desire to tuck it back, behind her ear. He leaned toward her as he struggled to decide what to do or say. His cell phone decided for him.

Kurt considered ignoring the call until Betsy pointed at his crotch and observed, "Your pants are ringing."

Kurt hopped down off the bar stool and dug his phone out of the front pocket of his jeans. The number was anonymous, which was never a good sign. With Betsy watching him from the corner of her eye, he took a small, steadying breath, and answered the call.

He was sure he blanched visibly when he heard Logan's emotion-filled voice in his ear, asking to meet him somewhere, anywhere.

Glancing meaningfully at Betsy's still-averted eyes, Kurt heard himself agreeing to the meeting. Even worse, he heard himself suggesting the following evening at the Cliff House. It stuck in his mind because the owner, a man who insisted he owed Kurt a favour, had recently tried to talk him into taking advantage of renovations and the off-season to enjoy an unusually discrete getaway. But of course Kurt had declined the offer; the whole thought had depressed him, not only because he had no one to take with him, but because it forced him to confront the fact that he couldn't think of anyone he'd even _want_ to take with him—not for an entire weekend at a deserted beachfront resort.

Logan agreed to the time and place without hesitation, and was quickly gone again. Kurt replaced his phone in his pocket, feeling as though he might disintegrate if it weren't for Betsy's now-attentive eyes, holding him upright in their orbit.

"Remember what I said," she told him. "Matter over mind."

Kurt couldn't quite come up with a rueful smile. "That doesn't sound right."

"Trust me."

Betsy poured herself off the stool and came to his side. She laid a calm, confidant hand on the side of his neck, index finger tickling the fur behind his ear. Kurt forced himself to breathe slowly, issuing his tail a firm command not to curl toward Betsy's body, as he knew it wanted to. Finally, and with a brief, flickering return of her playful smile, Betsy released him.

"Trust me," she said again.

"I always have," he assured her.

Her lips twitched again as she turned to leave. Kurt glanced at the countertop, at the book she left behind.

"You don't want your book?"

"I'm done with it," said Betsy, not turning back. "You can have it, if you want."

Kurt waited a respectful time before following Betsy's departure. But he left the book where it was. Surely, there was at least one other mutant on Utopia who must need it more than he did.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

As he drove toward his meeting with Kurt, Logan's thoughts were full of Mariko. Or at least, he wanted them to be. In truth, while Logan tried to focus on the memory of his one-time-fiancé who'd died by his hand many years ago that day, his mind was unavoidably overrun with thoughts of Kurt.

Logan hadn't been truly alone with Kurt since the day he'd left him at the SHIELD base at Novosibirsk, when he'd hoped to hurt him enough to save him. By all accounts, he'd succeeded, at least in the "hurting" part. The "saving" part was less certain. Despite Kurt's largely successful attempts to avoid him, even Logan could see Kurt was teetering on the brink of something. He was disengaged, distracted, even apathetic, not just personally, but professionally; Logan no longer had many chances to talk to Kurt, but he had plenty of chances to see him fight, and in that area, Kurt was a shadow of his usual self.

Since Logan had known Kurt, there had been a joy to his movements. Even in the midst of a furious, bloody, or seemingly hopeless battle, Kurt never truly lost his performer's flair, never truly stopped revelling in the opportunity to unleash the amazing gifts that were both his greatest burden and greatest pride. But in the last few months, since the X-Men moved to Utopia, Logan no longer saw that joy. What he did see was Kurt going through the motions, lacking cohesion between movements that were a fraction of a second too slow. Usually, Kurt was good enough to get away with imperfection. But there had been some close calls. Logan especially remembered a street level brawl with the Hellfire Cult, when Kurt had been inexplicably slow in reacting to the presence of a gun. Logan had shouted a warning, but even then, Kurt had barely teleported out of the way in time, finally letting the bullet whiz through a thick cloud of sulphurous, purple smoke. Yet it wasn't just the fact of Kurt's slow reaction that worried Logan; it was also the substance of it. Kurt didn't react slowly because he didn't see the gun. Logan knew that he did see it, but that he didn't particularly seem to care.

Logan pulled up in front of the Cliff House, into the empty parking lot on the far side of the crashing waves. He turned off the engine, and paused, readying himself. He felt guilty for not being surprised that Kurt agreed to the meeting. But then, Kurt's penchant for forgiveness was legendary, especially where Logan was concerned. Logan tried to convince himself he wasn't taking advantage of Kurt's compassion; as usual, he wasn't completely successful. Yet if Kurt was predictable, Logan knew he was worse—because no matter how many times he told himself he was leaving forever and for Kurt's own good, he always came back.

Finally, Logan left the car and headed toward the main entrance. For what felt like the hundredth time, he assured himself he was only seeing Kurt to talk, and only about Mariko. In the past months, Logan had missed Kurt's wisdom and respect as least as much as his body. Between X-Force, a newly remembered past, and especially the complications associated with the unwelcome revelation of the son he never knew he had, Logan was feeling crushed under the weight of secrecy, by the realization that he possessed more secrets than he'd ever known or thought possible. Confessing the truth about Mariko represented a small but important step in negotiating the imbalance. It was also a way to test the waters, to see whether it was possible to recapture any small fragment of a cherished friendship that was torturing him in its absence.

Some part of Logan, the part that housed and guarded every physical memory of Kurt as a sacred remnant of an irrecoverable past, already recognized the grave impossibility of returning to the platonic. All of Kurt's smell, his voice, the light in his fur, and a thousand other expressions of his self through his body were part of Logan now, flowing through his veins, stitching together his muscles, and stamped on his bones. Now and forever, Logan was as incapable of losing Kurt's body as he was incapable of severing his own arm; Logan's claws couldn't cut through his bones, and as long as they remained intact, the flesh would always return.

Logan rang the doorbell of the closed resort, and had to wait a few minutes for a man wearing paint-splattered coveralls to open the door.

"Yeah?"

"Uh…" Logan hesitated, realizing he had no idea where he was supposed to meet Kurt. "I'm lookin' for… He's blue with—"

"On the roof. Take the first stairwell to your right."

Logan concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other as he climbed the five flights of stairs to the roof. It was pure inertia that allowed him to reach the top, and open the door. Kurt was some thirty feet away, perched precariously on the concrete ledge, staring out at the orange sky where it met the distant, white-specked waves. His tail twitched thoughtfully, or maybe nervously. Even for Logan, Kurt's tail was a clue, but not a guidebook; despite or perhaps because of its seeming transparency, it remained mysterious.

At the sound of the door closing, Kurt turned, hopping down off the ledge and taking a few tentative steps in Logan's direction. Logan didn't approach Kurt because he couldn't: the effect of being confronted with Kurt's living, breathing self in the absence of uniforms or prying eyes was worse, and more total, than Logan could have imagined, or even feared. The entire world slowed to a lurch as Kurt stepped through a glancing ray of sunlight and became a silhouette, a fork-tailed hole cut out against the backdrop of the orange sky. For that moment he was all body, all square shoulders and narrow hips moving in time to the rolling gate of his strange feet and rhythmically swishing tail, the motion of which always made him seem like he was walking at an angle, confronting things sidelong in a style all his own.

Then Kurt took another step, and filled in again, becoming bare indigo feet, dark denim jeans, and a red, long-sleeved Henley, the open neck exposing a thin triangle of his shiny fur and the slight groove of his pecs. His wavy, blue-black hair, always slightly too long, was battered about his face by the wind, sometimes obscuring his glowing golden eyes, narrowed, now, above his stern blue lips.

"Hello, Logan."

The coldness of Kurt's tone brought Logan partway back to himself. He hauled forth the painful memory of Mariko's death, in his arms and on his claws, installing it as a temporary barrier against the irrepressible temptation of Kurt's touchable presence.

Logan told Kurt about Mariko and Kurt listened, as he always did, melted by Logan's obvious turmoil and his respect for everything Mariko had meant to him. Yet as they talked, Logan still struggled to focus on his one-time fiancé, whose reality and memory would always be bound up with Kurt, not least of all because of what happened three days after Mariko didn't marry him.

The day he returned to the Mansion after the wedding that never was, Logan had roped Kurt into a massive, emotion-drenched binge that began in the kitchen and ended in Kurt's quarters, where Logan hooked his arm around his best friend's midsection, sweeping his other hand quickly, deliberately over that same friend's crotch, squeezing gently to hear the tiny sigh of his acceptance. That was how it had been back then, Logan requesting and Kurt allowing, always holding back, denying the true depth of his pleasure and longing as Logan stripped the clothes off his body and touched the secret sweet spots he'd already known so well, the tips of his ears, the smooth area around his almost-black nipples, the dense twist of fur at his belly button, and, of course, the base of his tail and under it, a spot that, touched at the right moment, and in the right way, routinely pushed Kurt to the brink of his tightly wound control, producing shakily clenched fists and stifled noises from the back of his throat.

That night, Kurt had come in Logan's hand with a silent, full-body shiver that Logan knew for the disguise it was. But then Kurt had done something Logan hadn't expected, something he'd never done before. He'd turned in Logan's grip and taken his body in hand, peeling off Logan's shirt to run his singular hands over his chest and the contours of his muscles before dropping to his knees, tugging Logan's jeans the rest of the way down and taking his cock in his mouth and hand. Logan thought he'd come twice with the sensation, sight, and knowledge of Kurt swallowing every last drop of him, his other blue hand gripping the back of his thigh, pulling him closer, deeper, between his blue lips.

Afterwards, Kurt had stayed because Logan hadn't allowed him to leave, making things okay with his hands and body in a way he never could with words. The next day, they'd woken in a sunbeam and each other's arms and gone their separate ways, as though nothing had changed. Except that they both knew otherwise: because when Logan had woken up, he'd found Kurt awake but faking it, pretending to sleep inside the knot of Logan's arms. And Logan had let him.

In the present, Kurt was back to behaving conventionally—forgiving him, assuring him Mariko's death wasn't his fault. And Logan was sick of it, sick of his forgiveness, sick of every reminder of Kurt's superiority that only foregrounded his own inadequacies.

"Dammit, Kurt!" he snapped. "You said you'd listen to me, so listen! I didn't do it for _her_. I did it for _me_. I did it so our love would last forever. So that… I'd never have to watch _it_ die."

Logan stormed away from Kurt, pulling his cowboy hat even lower over his eyes.

After a moment, Kurt said, in a faraway voice, "Has it occurred to you that she may have felt the same way?"

"What?"

"Forgive me for being _blunt_, Logan," said Kurt, a hint of emotion finally creeping into his voice. "But… she was going to die _anyway_, be it from poison, old age, any number of reasons. All of which you are immune to."

Without turning around, Logan watched Kurt out of the corner of his eye as he rubbed the back of his indigo neck with his two-fingered hand. Logan wondered how often Kurt thought about those things: about the future, and about growing old. Logan rarely thought about them, in reference to either himself or Kurt. For one thing, Logan was sure that despite his healing factor and all practical experience, out of the two of them, he would die first. He sure of it because he had to be, and because he'd worked so hard to stack the odds in Kurt's favour; short of leaving him and never coming back, there was nothing Logan wouldn't do, no sacrifice he wouldn't make, to protect Kurt, and in the grand scheme of things, that had to be worth something. But even if they both lived many more decades, long enough for Logan to watch Kurt grow old, Logan still wasn't worried, knowing that as long as Kurt lived and breathed, he would always be beautiful; he could never be anything but, because he would always be Kurt.

"I was lookin' into her eyes when I did it, Kurt. She didn't wanna die."

"Perhaps… she died on _her_ terms rather than _yours_. And _you_ cannot handle that."

With those words, the double-meaning of their conversation became clear. Logan ground his teeth. The wind had changed so that Kurt's scent was everywhere, washing over him in gusts and tides; each breath was like a glass of Kurt and saltwater. Having to resist being inside that scent only added to Logan's anger. As did the necessity of talking around the things they should have been saying, those things Logan wanted to say so badly, but couldn't figure out how.

Abruptly, Logan turned toward the stairwell.

"I gotta go."

"You're _leaving_ now?"

"Yeah."

Logan was so tense that when Kurt teleported in front of him, he lowered himself instinctively into a fight-ready stance, expecting Kurt to lash out at him. But instead Kurt merely offered his hand, less in conciliation than bitter goodbye.

Logan stared at Kurt's open palm for just a moment before seizing it, pulling Kurt roughly into a stiff hug made doubly awkward by the still-joined hands that ended up pressed between their bodies. Kurt tried to pull away quickly but Logan didn't let him, squeezing his hand frantically, almost painfully. So they remained there for long seconds, touching, but not touching, Logan breathing deeply, resisting the mad impulse to bury his face into the crook of Kurt's neck.

Finally, Kurt made a move to pull away in earnest, and Logan let him. Despite Kurt's invisible pupils, Logan could see his glowing eyes darting as he stepped out of his reach. He could also smell the change in him, that familiar, faint heightening of adrenaline specific to Kurt's sweat, skin, and fur.

"What…" Kurt swallowed. "Are you heading back to Utopia, or…"

"No."

Logan felt Kurt's gaze hot on his cheek, and turned toward it. But it wasn't a look of rebuke. It was something worse. Kurt wasn't angry—he was resigned.

"Kurt…"

Logan's plea seemed to come from some place deep within him, some place his conscious mind couldn't touch. As did the imperative to step forward, to close the distance between them and reach out for that tantalizing, shadow-dark curve of Kurt's neck. Logan felt Kurt's heartbeat racing under his fingers as he ran them upwards against the grain of his fur, his thumb pressing the space behind his ear.

"Logan…" Kurt warned. It was almost a sigh. But he didn't pull away.

Logan wedged his hips closer, forcing the friction of denim against denim. His other hand ran down Kurt's side, over his ribs to his waist and the belt of his jeans, and then up, under his shirt to that mythical, impossible mix of soft and hard that Logan suddenly couldn't comprehend ever giving up. Kurt didn't respond until Logan sank his finger into the deep, soft crevice of his belly button, at which point he made another, surer protest.

Kurt seized Logan's hands in his, wrenching them away from his body as he backed out of his embrace for the second time in as many minutes. "Stop."

A portion of Logan's rational mind returned to him—enough for guilt, though not regret.

"I—I'm sorry," he managed, dropping his eyes. Then, so quietly his voice seemed to disappear into the salty wind, he repeated, "I'm sorry."

When Logan finally raised his head, he was greeted by that look again, of Kurt being disappointed, but expecting it. Yet Kurt's face seemed to change over the long moments Logan studied it. Gradually, Kurt's features softened until he, too, dropped his gaze.

Tonelessly, Kurt said, "Why is it I always have to be the voice of reason."

"You don't—"

"Why can't I say I've missed you, too?"

"Elf…"

"Don't. Just… don't. I should never have come here. I should have known better than to—"

"What? Be alone with me?"

Kurt looked up sharply. Logan was actually gratified to see real anger emerge on his face.

"What do you expect to happen here, Logan? Is this why you called me? We've barely talked in months, and now, on the anniversary of your fiancé's death, you call me up for a sympathy fuck? Am I supposed to feel _grateful_? To know that you've been thinking of me so _highly_?"

"I—no," Logan fumbled, wishing that instead of talking he could show him, show him the truth of what he thought of him, using the body that had always been more reliable than his words. "I called 'cause I wanted to see you, but I didn't…" Logan pressed and ground his claws against his knuckles as he trailed off. "I'm sorry."

"So you keep saying."

Logan felt his own anger rising again, frustrated by the inability to communicate that Kurt seemed to know and exploit. "And you talk about _me_ making assumptions."

Kurt tossed his head skyward, flashing his fangs in a humourless smile. "Ah, yes. This is the point where you turn things around and make _me_ feel like the guilty party, ja?"

"I never said—"

"You didn't have to. We have had this conversation before. I hope we don't have to have it again."

Kurt turned and started walking away, toward the stairwell.

"Where are you going?"

"_I _am leaving. Going back to Utopia. Our wonderful, industrial steel-barricaded island home. I'm sure I'll run into you there at some point. Probably the next time Scott orders us to work together for the sole purpose of testing my loyalty."

"_Your_ loyalty?"

Kurt stopped in front of the door, but didn't turn around. "You really think he's worried _you'll_ desert him? Even _I_ know better than that."

He paused, then, blue hand clenching in and out of a fist at his side.

"And besides," he continued. "Scott has plenty of fighters. I'm there for PR."

"You really think that?"

"I _know_ it."

Logan wanted to tell Kurt he was wrong. But of course he couldn't. Increasingly, he felt as though he understood very little about what Scott Summers was thinking.

"We're your friends, Kurt. Isn't that enough?"

"I suppose it will have to be."

Kurt's hand was on the doorknob when Logan curled his fingers around his shoulder.

"Kurt, wait. Please."

"Give me one good reason why I should."

Logan hated forcing himself on Kurt. It was a betrayal of everything he hoped was good about himself when he was with him. And yet he didn't know what else to do. He was stymied by Kurt's distance, by his denial of his body and his refusal to either yell or cry. If he didn't do something now Kurt was going to leave, and once they were back on Utopia, back in that military-socialist paradise where the gazes of the friends and teammates were never more than a room away, there wouldn't be another chance. It was now or never. So Logan reached out and seized him, grabbing a fistful of shirt in one hand and the back of Kurt's neck in the other, yanking him roughly forward and down to meet his lips before throwing him back against the stairwell door, knocking his own hat off his head as he pinned Kurt there with his hands, hips, and chest, continuing to pry open his mouth.

Surprised by the suddenness of Logan's attack, Kurt struggled uselessly against his greater strength, shouting a vain protest down Logan's throat as his back collided with the door. Finally, Logan did release Kurt's lips but kept his body immobilized under the strength and weight of his own, holding Kurt's arms at the elbow.

Kurt's eyes were amber with rage as he glared down into Logan's face.

"Let go of me, Logan."

"No."

Kurt made another, violent effort to twist himself free. "_Logan_."

Preferring the touchability of Kurt's anger to the distance of his apathy, Logan seized on it, pressing ever closer as he growled, "We both know you can leave if you want to. Go. Teleport."

Kurt's eyes flashed as he ground his teeth inside his mouth.

"What's the matter?" Logan taunted. "Scared you might take part of me with you? Don't worry—it'll grow back."

"_Don't_ tempt me," Kurt warned, spitting the words through his fangs.

"Why?" Logan snarled back. "It's what you want, isn't it?"

"Why would I want—" Kurt stopped himself. He blinked slowly as the anger drained again from his face. "I don't want that," he finished lamely.

Logan loosened his grip on Kurt as he said, "I know."

Then Logan released Kurt completely, stepping back and dropping his hands to his sides. Kurt rubbed his arm where Logan had grabbed him as they stood there, separately, but in a shared silence, staring down at their bodies, listening to the waves breaking on the rocks.

"This is awful," Kurt said at last.

"Yeah," Logan agreed.

Kurt remained where he was as Logan took several steps away from him, toward the ledge and the nearly vanished sun. Kurt felt sick, and, worse than that, disoriented, separated from a moment he wanted so much to find a way to exist inside, but couldn't. Witnessing the utter defeat in the slope of Logan's powerful shoulders, Kurt wanted to maintain his anger, but found himself struggling with an equally powerful desire to take Logan in his arms and comfort his obvious grief; despite everything, he could barely stand to see Logan hurting, let alone to be the cause of it. He was petrified by the contradiction of it; everything seemed like the wrong thing to do, or maybe the right thing to do. At any rate, any and all decisions were beyond him. His only sure compulsion was to continue through the door, but even that seemed impossible. Kurt knew that even if he left the rooftop, left the X-Men, left the country or even the galaxy, Logan would always be there, a certainty both frightening and comforting.

His mind wandered back to a simpler time, five months ago, when he and Logan had nearly died in each other's arms on a frozen mountaintop. Then, too, Kurt had been numb, but in his body as well as his mind, numb with cold and pain and another kind of hurt mixed with a blinding anger he refused to allow to be the final thing he might ever feel. The limp weight of Logan's body had been draped across him, across the gaping hole in Kurt's shoulder that he only knew as an abstract concept within his quickly dimming brain. Kurt's one thought was that he needed to make the most out of each second, to try and wrench some meaning out of what might be his or Logan's last moments on earth. So he focused beyond the rancid smell of Logan's burnt flesh and the blood filling his own lungs and managed to whisper Logan's name, only to realize he was unconscious. Kurt had almost succumbed to a wild panic, then, chocking once, horribly, on his own blood. He wasn't afraid to die but he was terrified of dying not knowing whether Logan had lived, not knowing whether he'd saved him or condemned them both to death by not being good enough, fast enough, strong enough, by not being more like all those things that Logan was: efficient, dependable, ruthless.

Kurt wrapped his arms around his suddenly cold body as the scene changed, and he found himself back in the Red Room, reliving yet another sensation of numbness. Blind, deaf, bound, and unable to teleport, Kurt had spent at least twenty minutes flexing his muscles desperately, uselessly, against his restraints, feeling the buzz of a containment field with the tip of his lashing tail, fangs drawing blood from his lip as he fought another growing panic, less for himself than because he didn't know whether his friends were alive or dead. It was an unspeakable relief when the forcefield was lowered, and Kurt heard the sounds of Peter and Logan's screams a moment before the hood was pulled from his head and he saw them, Peter tied down with chains and Logan suspended from the ceiling, two dozen sparking electrodes smoking and burning against his bare skin. Then the general explained the situation and Kurt almost smiled, he so grateful for the ability to act. As the general counted down what Kurt thought would be the last three seconds of his life, Kurt reached out for Logan's pain-filled blue eyes, trying to infuse a lifetime into a look. And then he teleported. For what seemed like an eternity, Kurt's vision had gone black. And then it had gone bright white. And then it had been filled with Logan's face, and Kurt almost cried at the glory of being alive and in love.

Then Kurt flashed forward to several hours later at the Novosibirsk base, remembering how his exhaustion had been tempered by delirium, by what had still felt like the overwhelming reality of being alive, with Logan by his side. He remembered shifting uncomfortably in his SHIELD-issue clothes, made unreasonably anxious by the constriction of his tail inside his pants. His skin only itched worse under the undressing of Logan's staving gaze, searing a hole in his back. More than anything, he had wanted—needed—to be exactly what and where Logan also wanted him to be: naked, on any of his back, stomach, or feet, so long as Logan was deep inside of him, as long as he could feel the throb of Logan's blood, love, and desire within his body, grounding him on the earthly plane he'd thought he was prepared to leave behind forever but suddenly couldn't stand the thought of giving up, realizing he'd found something as worth living as dying for.

Now, though, standing in the cooling, twilight ocean breeze on the roof of the Cliff House resort, the life-and-death purity of those needs and emotions seemed like they belonged to another lifetime. Then, even with a lung full of blood, Kurt had at least been able to speak Logan's name. Now, he couldn't even do that. But he had to do something.

Kurt watched his own feet at he closed the distance between himself and Logan, knowing when to stop only when the heels of Logan's ostrich-skin boots came into view. He laid his hand on Logan's back, studying the contrast of his blue fingers against Logan's white t-shirt, feeling Logan's familiar, pounding heartbeat against his palm. Slowly, Logan turned to face him.

Looking down at Logan's belt buckle, Kurt said, "I want to kiss you. Is that okay?"

Logan snorted humourlessly. "When you put it that way…"

Kurt's lips twitched weakly as he raised his eyes, and touched the side of Logan's face, feeling the familiar, sharp lines of his jaw and cheekbone beneath the coarseness of his close stubble. He slipped his hand around the back of Logan's neck, into his thick hair, as he bent down and kissed him, as tender as Logan had been violent, though just as full of passion. When he broke off the kiss, Kurt eased his body closer, dropping his stomach against Logan's and his other arm around his neck, his tail brushing heavily against the back of Logan's denim-clad thigh. Logan slid his hands into the hollow of Kurt's back, fingernails scratching into the friction of fur and fabric, and Kurt had to swallow not to sigh. He wanted to do more, to let Logan have his way with him until he was crying out all his repressed animality to the heavens, making sounds only Logan's hands and body could provoke, and only Logan's self made okay. But not now. Not yet.

Kurt closed his eyes and inhaled, forcing himself into the moment, into the now of Logan's heartbeat against his own, admitting that despite everything, it did mean something to feel that, to be anchored against that strength—to be anchored together in strength.

He opened his eyes into Logan's and saw the sky above the mountaintop where they'd nearly died. He saw the silent plea in the Red Room and the hunger of a starving man for whom all food tastes sour save the one he tells himself he can never truly have. And of course he saw himself, his own golden eyes that were yellow dots in Logan's black pupils. Drawn toward himself, Kurt stopped an inch from Logan's face, feeling Logan's warm, damp breath mixing with his own against his lips and chin. He reached deep for the bodily courage he'd always depended on, the reckless abandon that first prompted him to dive head-first off a trapeze platform and kept him making leaps of faith ever since.

"Now…" he breathed, running his fingers up the back of Logan's neck. "I want you to kiss me."

Logan met Kurt's lips once, quickly, like an apology. Kurt chaffed at the briefness of the contact, pressing the fly of his jeans into Logan's belt buckle.

"I said I want you to _kiss_ me."

Logan seized his lips firmly, then, sliding his hands down and over Kurt's back pockets to pull him tight against his hardness. Kurt twisted his pelvis against Logan's, reeling against the embodiment of Logan's desire. A jolt raced through his veins when Logan's hand finally reached his tail, stroking down and then up, to where the underside met the hole in his jeans. He could only contain the deep rumble in his throat by nipping Logan's tongue with the edge of his fang and knotting his hands around the fabric of Logan's t-shirt, wrestling back against the solidity of his body.

Words began to fail him. "I... I want..."

Logan silenced him with another rough kiss. Kurt was both maddened and thrilled by the scratch of stubble in his fur, wanting all at once to fight and be owned, exulting in the challenge. When Logan's hands squeezed under his thighs, Kurt lashed his tail from Logan's leg to his waist and lifted himself up, wrapping Logan completely with his legs and arms, toes gripping stiff wrinkles of denim.

Logan's breath was hot inside his ear as he whispered, "Anything, elf."

Kurt caught a glimpse of the beach over Logan's shoulder and teleported, arriving at an angle, Logan's body crashing heavily against his own. They'd barely landed when Logan started hauling Kurt's shirt over his head and tugging at the waist of his jeans. Kurt's own awkward fingers fumbled frantically with Logan's belt, gasping ahead of a groan when Logan wrenched his jeans down past his tail. The rough, shifting motion of the dry sand against every inch of his newly-bare fur made Kurt crazy, but not as crazy as when Logan tossed a handful of the stuff against his midsection and rubbed.

His voice was thick and broken as he seized Logan's naked hips and demanded, "Tell me."

"I need you," Logan growled back. "Like... like life. I need you."

Kurt felt something break inside him; for the first time in months, he knew what he wanted.

He wrenched Logan's body down on top of him before flipping them both over to seize Logan from behind, rubbing himself between Logan's butt cheeks as he offered up his fingers for Logan's mouth. A moment later Kurt was inside him, so tight it almost hurt, Logan's hand squeezing the coil of his tail around his cock. They lost themselves together, Kurt throwing his head to the moon and stars, crying out once before collapsing back against the sand and Logan's thundering heartbeat.

"Oh Logan…" Kurt panted. "...oh _God_…"

The rush was better than jumping off a ledge, out of a plane, or into a volcano, better because he wasn't alone—because his best friend was with him. Kurt watched and felt the quick motion of Logan's breathing and smiled in turn at the small, disarmed smile playing on Logan's lips, knowing he had done that, he had found a way to haul forth that part of Logan he loved best, the part that offered carefree smiles to a low, quarter moon. Kurt relaxed into the cool sand, looking up at the moon though the slit of his eyelids, hearing Logan's own panting, fractured words inside his brain and all around him.

"Dammit... dammit I missed you..."

Logan was sure they were the truest words he'd ever spoken. The relief of being joined with Kurt's body was even greater than his longing for it; it was the difference between reality and a pale, fragmented dream. While Kurt was inside him, during the precious moments afterward, and for the first time in months, Logan only thought about one thing, and that thing was Kurt: the miracle of him, of being wanted by him, of being able to offer something besides pain, death, or disappointment to someone so beautiful, and so good. Logan laid a hand on Kurt's sandy, breathless indigo body. Then he kissed his ear and his jaw and every place he could reach, tasting the beauty of Kurt's release, his heavy, flickering eyelids and damp, parted, lips.

Finally, Kurt chuckled. "I think I've got sand in places I didn't even know about."

Logan snorted. "Tell me about it."

"But I think I have a solution."

"Wait, what—"

Logan didn't get a chance to finish before the air combusted around them and he found himself fifteen feet above the wavering body of the ocean, many more feet from the shore. In the split-second they hung suspended, Kurt pushed himself off Logan's body, managing a semi-graceful dive. Logan fell like a stone, hitting the cold water on his back with a painful smack.

He spit out the bitter taste of saltwater as he surfaced. "What the... _fuck_..."

Yet his anger dissipated a second later, when Kurt's head popped out of the inky water next to his—laughing, golden eyes sparkling against his wet, shadow-dark face, fangs flashing bright in the moonlight.

"It's colder than I thought it would be," Kurt offered.

"No kidding."

Kurt released another snort of laughter as he pulled Logan's shivering body toward him. He slicked Logan's wet hair away from his face and licked and kissed salt off the corner and pout of his lips.

"Sorry..." he said, smiling against Logan's cheek, tail slippery between their treading legs. "You make me want to do dangerous things."

"Like make me angry?"

"You're not angry."

Logan didn't confirm it except to twist Kurt quickly against him and return his kiss, tasting salt that was no longer bitter. Then Kurt pulled away and teleported them, along with a small splatter of water, directly into one of the resort's suites.

"Back in a second," he said, vanishing again and returning a moment later with their clothes. He tossed them on a chair and went to the bathroom for some towels.

Logan caught the towel Kurt threw his way, rubbing it once over his body before tying it around his waist. Kurt had it worse. Logan watched him try to dry himself but it was hopeless; between his tangled, wet hair and the grooves and patches of sand matted in his fur, Kurt was truly a sodden, pathetic sight. And yet, Logan thought he'd never looked happier, or even more beautiful, beaming with joy at his own sorry state.

Logan's smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "I thought you hated swimming."

"It depends on the company," said Kurt, countering Logan's half-hearted smile with a genuine one as he pushed his wet hair off his forehead. "But seriously—I need a shower before I can even think about touching the furniture. Just give me five minutes, okay?"

"Sure."

For the first minute after Kurt disappeared into the bathroom, Logan fully intended to stay; he saw himself throwing open the sheets on the king-size bed and having Kurt five different ways by morning before falling into a blissfully dreamless sleep in the haze of his musky scent. During the second minute, he lambasted himself for the selfishness of that desire; he saw Daken standing above Kurt's mangled corpse, Kurt's still-warm blood dripping off his son's bone claws. By the third minute he was shaking out his sandy t-shirt, and by the fourth minute he was dressed. He would have been gone by the fifth minute if not for an unaccountable hesitation. Kurt, emerging from the bathroom still wet but much cleaner, caught him with his hand on the doorknob.

Kurt froze, feeling the blood drain from his face. He seemed to hear his own voice from a great distance as he began to ask the inevitable, hopeless question, "What are you—"

"I can't stay."

"Why."

"You know I can't tell you that."

"Why did you even come here if you—"

"'Cause I wanted to see you."

"And now you've seen me."

Logan didn't respond. He'd taken his hand off the doorknob but was still standing by the door, eyes interrogating the carpet.

Kurt blinked, tightening the towel around his waist as he forced himself to take a breath. "What was this, then? A memory?"

"Maybe."

Kurt snorted humourlessly. "Well, at least you're honest."

Logan shifted his weight, flexing his knuckles. "Don't play the saint with me. It takes two to tango."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"At least I've always known what I wanted."

Kurt narrowed his eyes, incredulity giving way to anger. "How can I know what I want when I'm never sure what's being _offered_?"

Logan's gaze flickered, but not toward Kurt. "It's always been there," he mumbled. "If you wanted it."

"Sex, you mean."

"I mean everything."

"On whose terms?"

"Your terms. Whatever terms you want."

"This is the first I'm hearing about it."

"Haven't I _showed_ you?"

Kurt's nostrils flared, his tail slashing beneath his towel. "_I_ have been the one walked out on. Not once, but _twice_. This makes three."

"For your own sake."

Kurt didn't say anything for a long minute, too perplexed, and too angry, to think of what to say, let alone convince his leaden muscles to perform the act of speaking.

At last, and with deep conviction tempered only by exasperation, he said, "I want to hit you so badly. Even knowing I'd only break my hand... It might be worth it."

"Do it. If it makes you feel better."

Kurt shook his head slowly, anger mixing with nausea. "Right..."

He passed a hand over his face, wondering why he always had to be naked for such scenes, and if Logan planned it that way. He closed his eyes and concentrated on his tone, on the necessity of maintaining his composure long enough to voice at least some of the things he knew he should have said months or even years ago.

"Do you know I've never been angry with you, Logan? Never truly angry. You've had so much violence in your life, more violence is _not_ the answer. You talk about showing me how you feel—don't you think I've tried to show you, too? I've tried to show you forgiveness, empathy… I've tried to offer you a place where you didn't _need_ violence to be yourself. Yet I realize now I've shown you nothing. You think you're protecting me by pushing me away, not even realizing I was trying to do the same thing by… by…"

Kurt swallowed hard as he turned away, crossing his arms over his damp, naked chest. Even to prove a point he couldn't say what he felt, a failing that embarrassed him as much as the emotion itself. He hated how naïve he sounded, and how weak; for all his talk of strength, and all his belief in trust, he couldn't even tell Logan he loved him for fear of him, for fear of the power it would grant him. Kurt reminded himself for the umpteenth time that he'd always known better than to give his heart to Logan; his body was one thing, but his heart—his soul—was something else entirely, something he'd always sworn he'd keep to himself. Yet love had blinded him to the danger of love, and now here he was again, hating himself for loving, for giving his soul and losing it. He saw himself—felt himself—tied face-down to the bed frame, his tail knotted in Logan's squeezing fist, moaning inarticulately as Logan slammed into him, pressing down his shoulders with his other free hand, growling and grunting his own pleasure as he pushed himself ever-deeper inside Kurt's body. Kurt's mind reeled. How could he know who he was if he couldn't trust his own desires? If he couldn't even be sure of what he _wanted_?

He glanced back at Logan, and bit his lip. Even now, seeing the sorry and guilt so profoundly written across the dejected face and form of the best, most loyal and forgiving friend or lover he'd ever known, Kurt couldn't maintain the full force of his anger, or his sense of betrayal. He still saw so much goodness in that man, a goodness he'd felt in and through Logan's hands and body as surely as he'd heard it in his voice and seen it in his many selfless actions. Yet with that selflessness came the impulse to martyrdom, to Logan privileging his pain, and his ability to endure pain, above that of others. Too often, Logan regarded himself as an adult among children. Or a man among women…

Logan said, "I do love you, Kurt."

"I…" Kurt hesitated, struggling to recapture his anger but failing, succumbing to honestly. "I know," he said heavily. "But… that's not enough, is it?"

For the first time in minutes, Logan looked up, challenging Kurt with his vibrant, blue eyes. "Well, what do you really want? You want to get married, buy a house, adopt a gayby?"

"_No_."

"Well, then…"

"I want us to be there for each other," Kurt pleaded, uncrossing his arms and taking a step toward Logan's gaze. "I want you to be the person I can be honest with. And I want you to be honest with me."

Logan's lips were a stern, unreadable line. "Since when does the guy who turns religious each time he gets dumped get to lecture me about honesty?"

"You _really_ think my religion is all about you?"

"I never said that."

Kurt laid both his hands against his temples and pushed them back through his wet hair, turning away again. "Of course not. As though I don't already know what you think..."

Logan sighed audibly. In a softer tone, he said, "I might be an asshole, Kurt, but what you're talkin' about… It goes both ways."

Facing the wall, Kurt shook his head, knowing there were no right answers to the questions at hand. Or at least, none either of them were prepared or equipped to give. Not yet, and maybe not ever.

For the second time that evening, Logan said, "I gotta go."

Kurt was so overwhelmed by the tragic irony that he actually chuckled dryly. "Ja," he intoned. "I guess I'll see you later."

He heard the door open, studying the pattern of the wallpaper, choosing not to watch Logan leaving him for the third time even as he wondered whether he should make himself watch it, wondering, too, if he should have prevented it, or if he even could have.

"Logan."

"Yeah."

Kurt's eyes fell to his indigo thumb running back and forth over the fingers of his clenched fist.

"Be careful."

"Yeah."

The door closed and Kurt turned toward the spot where Logan had been. His eyes narrowed to a point as he fought off a flood of images and sensations, memories that threatened to overwhelm visions of the future. Stiffly, he opened his first, raised his arm, and touched his chest above his heart, remembering Logan's hands patching a gushing, bloody hole, touching stained bandages, and tracing delicate patterns of scar tissue. He blinked once, deliberately, and dropped his arm.

Then he gathered his clothes, got dressed, and returned to Utopia.

**~THE END...?~**


End file.
